Fake Fiance, Real Revenge: A Three River Ranch Novel (Entangled Bliss) Read online

  “What?”

  The caring in her voice and her embrace made something in Mitch go soft and warm.

  “I’ve been praying and praying for you to come home.” She cleared her throat. “For you to find happiness. If this is what the good Lord had in mind, far be it from me to interfere. Welcome home, my boy.”

  His throat tightened. It had been so long since he’d felt like anyone gave a damn for him beyond his ability to take bare land and turn it into money. But Bliss’s sentiment was real.

  As was Rory’s…

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” she said as soon as they entered the house. A sentiment almost as rich in joy as it was in hurt. Disappointment at being overlooked, left out, ignored, forgotten. No one enjoyed that feeling. He floundered around, looking for words to take the sting out of an action that was unforgivable—had it been real.

  But Sabrina got there first, and with exactly the right tone and response to smooth the ruffled feathers.

  “I’m so sorry, Rory honey,” she said, taking the baby into her arms. “There’s no excuse. It wasn’t exactly planned out. It was sudden. You of all people should understand how these things just happen sometimes.”

  Rory made a wry face. “You got me there. Okay, okay, but you’re going to have to make it up to me eventually. For now, I’ll forgive you. Come on into the kitchen so we can hear all the gritty details. This calls for a bottle of merlot.”

  “Don’t open anything until we get there,” Della called. “Let’s go unpack, Paris, quick, quick! Melvin! I’m not paying you to stand around and pretty up the landscape!” They trundled off to the guesthouse.

  “Honey?” Sabrina turned to him with a smile. “You must be starved. Let’s go.”

  For an instant, Mitch felt as if everything they’d talked about was real. The conversation they’d just endured was based on fact, not a convoluted comedy of manipulation and assumption. He felt as if his fiancée were standing in front of him, concerned about his well-being, anticipating his needs. Caring for him.

  For real.

  Sabrina took his arm and the flowery scent reached him again. He let himself be led up the rustic wooden steps to the porch of the home where deep within, beneath the fresh paint and rearranged walls, lay the last remnants of what it felt like for him to be loved and accepted for who he was.

  Three River Ranch. His boyhood home. The place where he’d once been happy, so long ago. And where everything had blown apart, where his faith in family had been destroyed. Where he’d lost his mother, his father, his brother, and, ultimately, himself.

  And where now, in an odd turn of events, he found himself being welcomed back as if they’d always been hoping he’d return. It was all so different from what he’d expected. The most disturbing part was that it felt real. A burr of guilt prickled his conscience. Bliss was right: people would be angry and hurt, once they discovered he’d been lying to them.

  But strangest of all was being here with Sabrina, pretending to be in love. Because although neither of them was in love, not even a little, the pretending part came easily.

  Almost…natural, even.

  If he wasn’t paying attention, he might forget that it was all an act.

  Chapter Five

  After everyone else had gone to bed, Mitch stood by the window in the tastefully furnished room, marveling at the quiet. The trickling man-made water feature outside his Seattle condo was restful but he realized now that it didn’t come close to the natural peace of the towering mountain embrace.

  Then he heard the sound of a vehicle pulling into the yard and he recognized why he’d really stayed up. Best to break the ice when no one else was around to watch.

  He stepped downstairs, barefoot, and waited for his brother in the kitchen.

  “Hey, Carson.”

  Fatigue lined his face, but it still broke into a smile. “Mitch, bro, good to see you, man!” Carson stepped up and gave him a rough, back-slapping hug.

  “Sorry to throw this on you.” A hug? Mitch hadn’t expected that. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “You’re always welcome here. You know that, don’t you?”

  His echo of Rory’s earlier words both warmed and disturbed Mitch. He’d been prepared to pick up their relationship where they’d left off. Their roles were clear. Mitch didn’t like it, but he knew what to do.

  This new, easygoing brother left him floundering. Without a willing opponent, emotional armor not only weighs one down, but it makes him look ridiculous.

  “You haven’t met your other guests yet. You might change your tune then.”

  “I can always kill you later.” Carson opened the refrigerator. “Rory says you’re gonna be here for a month?”

  “That’s right. It’s a business thing or I wouldn’t put you out like that.”

  “Knock off the martyr shtick, will you?” He pulled two bottles of water out and tossed one to Mitch.

  As Mitch caught it, he heard the sound of little bare feet slapping across the hardwood.

  “Dad-dee! Dad-dee!”

  Carson dropped to a squat. Mitch watched in amazement as his brother’s demeanor became even more unrecognizable. His face softened, his eyes brightened, his mouth creased into a grin. He opened his arms just in time for his little bunny-footed daughter to vault into his embrace. A faint whiff of ammonia wafted in with her.

  “What are you doing up, sweetheart? Whoa, I think you got heavier while I was gone. What’s Mama feeding you these days, huh? Or is Grandma Bliss giving you cookies when Mama’s not looking?”

  “Cookies!” The child grinned. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes heavy with sleep.

  “Oh boy, I feel sorry for you, in that case. You’ve just earned yourself the tickle-torture for your punishment.”

  He blew a few raspberries on the toddler’s round belly.

  Finally they stopped for breath and Mitch felt the full weight of the kid’s gaze running over him.

  “Dad-dee?” She peeked out from Carson’s shoulder.

  “You remember your uncle Mitchell, don’t you, honey?”

  “She’s a little shy with me.” Mitch patted her hand awkwardly, but she yanked it away. A thunderous frown knitted her pint-size forehead.

  “No!”

  Rory trotted into the room, her blond hair mussed and loose around her neck. “Ah-ha! That’s why you woke up, you little rascal. Hey baby, welcome home.”

  She put her hands on either side of Carson’s face and kissed him, so tenderly Mitch had to look away.

  Then she lifted the baby from his arms. “Come on, Lulu-bell. That diaper’s well past its best-before date. And this time, you’re gonna sleep in your own bed.”

  She and Carson exchanged a glance. Mitch had to get out of there.

  “Nice to meet you again, Lesley,” he said, a little too heartily. “Maybe next time you’ll remember your uncle Mitch, right?”

  “No!” Her lip puckered and trembled. She hid her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  “She only gets called that when she’s in trouble, Mitch,” Rory whispered as she comforted the now-wailing child. “Don’t be long, Carson.”

  “You might have warned me,” Mitch muttered as she left the room. Now his only niece hated him.

  “You’re a stranger to her. You’ve only got yourself to blame for that.”

  Carson was right, Mitch admitted to himself. When he’d heard his brother had married a single mother, his first reaction was disbelief. He hadn’t expected it to last. Carson’s track record with women was as bad as his own. The relationship template they’d gotten from their father wasn’t conducive to longevity.

  And if there had been affection and laughter in their childhood home, it had died with their mother.

  To see a Granger be so openly affectionate, so deeply in love with not just the woman, but with the child as well, was unnerving. And a child to whom he wasn’t genetically linked? Carson, a scientist whose life work was studying mustang genes so as to
preserve them in as close to their original state as possible?

  “People can change, Mitch,” he said eventually.

  “Of course. I just never thought you would. Marriage? Fatherhood? But it suits you. You’re lucky.”

  “Damn straight I am. Those two are the best thing that ever happened to me. But don’t kid yourself. Luck is just the beginning.” He poked a finger in Mitch’s chest, but not maliciously. “It takes work. And a hell of a lot of courage. Hardest thing a man can do is look at himself honestly.”

  Mitch grabbed Carson’s wrist and pushed it away. “Don’t tell me my little brother just called me a coward and a liar.”

  Carson grinned. “Your words, not mine.”

  They tussled like boys and for a second, Mitch was thrown back into childhood, before the rough waters of adolescence and everything that followed.

  “Strange way to welcome a guest,” he said, when they broke apart, huffing.

  Carson punched him in the arm, but there was no weight behind it. “This is frickin’ sunshine and lollipops, brother. You can thank Rory that you weren’t shot on sight.”

  “I wanted to thank you for looking after Della and Paris, letting them stay on the ranch.”

  Carson looked up. “Hey, don’t kid yourself—you’ll be doing all the heavy lifting. We’re just providing accommodations. I’ll show them around the sanctuary, but I can’t babysit them for a month. Rory’s spending the next two weeks orienting families with their new service dogs. Training camp, she calls it. Bliss will cook and clean and make sure they have everything they need. But we’re not upending our lives for your convenience.”

  It was a fair shot. After all, Mitch hadn’t been there to help sort out the mess of their father’s will. Carson was the one who’d lusted after the title to Three River Ranch. Carson wanted the prize, Carson paid the price.

  And now he was letting Mitch know that he’d paid in full and owed nothing to the brother who’d chosen to slide the bill across the table but now wanted to snack on the doggy bag.

  “So is this for real, you and Sabrina?”

  “Wow, bro, cut to the chase why don’t you?” Mitch tipped the water bottle to his lips to buy a little time. As if time would help. “We had a thing once. Why couldn’t we find it again?”

  “’Cause you dumped her and disappeared over the horizon. Women don’t forget stuff like that.”

  “She might have dumped me! Did anyone think of that?”

  Carson snorted.

  “Did it occur to you,” Mitch snapped, “that maybe I was doing her a favor? Come on, we share DNA. You can’t tell me that you had Rory’s best interests in mind when you tied the knot! Surely you must have thought, maybe my good deed to the universe would be to tie this poor pretty devil to a hot-air balloon and light the fire to keep the Granger curse from spreading.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, bro.” Carson’s color was high, but his voice stayed even. “Can’t be the hero who let her go before, without being the bastard who’s dragging her back now. One of ’em’s a lie. Which is it?”

  Mitch knew he ought to hold back, but maybe they needed to get some of this old poison out of the way. No one knew about what had really destroyed what he and Sabrina had shared. Maybe if they did, he wouldn’t be judged so harshly now. “Must be nice to have everything so simple in your life, Carson. Are you telling me that you embraced fatherhood? That when that little surprise was sprung on you, you did the happy dance without a single, solitary moment of panic?” Mitch looked away. “Well, I panicked.”

  Carson frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  Mitch lifted an eyebrow at him.

  Carson’s eyes widened. “You mean…Sabrina got knocked up?”

  Mitch nodded. “I didn’t have the best reaction, but hell, I was just a kid! We both were. Before I could even figure out how to fix things, Sabrina…well, the problem was gone.”

  “Bro. I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. He’d been accused, tried, convicted, and sentenced. Without anyone to speak a word in his defense. “I came this close to ruining her life and I wasn’t about to let it happen again. So I left. I thought it was the best thing to do at the time.”

  Mitch knew precious little about his brother’s whirlwind affair with Rory, but he did know that Carson had gotten someone pregnant once before. He could now see the memories flooding over Carson, how he understood why a man might want to run and run and never look back.

  How Rory had broken through that and accessed Carson’s soul, Mitch didn’t know.

  “And suddenly everything’s different now because…?” his brother said, eyebrows raised.

  Mitch waited a moment, thinking Carson had more to say. But Carson took his hesitation for answer. He looked at Mitch and the disappointment cut like a laser. “She’s a good woman. She does a lot of good in this community. If you break her—”

  “I’m not going to break her! God!” Mitch crushed the empty bottle in his hand “I’d never do anything to hurt her! I know how special she is, how much she does for everyone.”

  “And yet you’re staying with us, and not her.”

  Damn. Another thing they hadn’t thought through. “She spends half her nights in the delivery room anyway.”

  Carson watched him thoughtfully. “I’ve had a long couple of days and call me crazy, but all I want is to crawl into my warm bed with my wife. Maybe you and Sabrina have something different. Different strokes, I guess. But if you say it’s real, then congratulations. I’m happy for you both.”

  And before the conversation could spiral further, Carson picked up his water and left the kitchen.

  …

  When Mitch arrived at Sabrina’s the next morning for their strategic planning session—and didn’t that sound romantic?—he looked worse than some of her new dads.

  “Rough night, huh?” She took his hand and drew him toward her, then brushed a quick soft kiss onto his cheek. “I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Bono whined and wagged his tail uncertainly. Poor thing. She was giving off mixed signals and that was never good for the bond.

  Mitch stumbled over the threshold and let the screen door slam shut behind him. He jumped at the sound. “Uh, sorry about that. You caught me off guard.”

  Good start.

  “In a good way, I hope?” She tipped her head and looked at him through a screen of hair she hadn’t tied up yet for work. He’d always loved her hair.

  “I’m alive, aren’t I? No man’s gonna complain about a greeting like that.”

  She let her smile drop. “Well, don’t get used to it. Sit down. I’ve got a half hour.” He sat. “If we’re gonna sell this engagement, we’d better get our facts straight. You nearly blew it yesterday.”

  Bono crept to his patch of carpet in the sun. He hated her stern voice.

  As, apparently, did Mitch. Color rose in his neck. He looked different today, Sabrina thought. He hadn’t shaved, that was it! He’d been clean-shaven when he arrived, decked out in his business suit and tie. This morning however, his jaw was whiskered and he was wearing a pair of jeans. Very nice-fitting jeans.

  And…were those…?

  “Cowboy boots?” They were in decent shape, if dusty. Definitely not freshly purchased for the visit. Wait. She blinked. Those were his own boots, his old boots, the ones he’d been so proud of.

  “Oh, sorry.” Mitch bent to take them off.

  “No, it’s fine, keep them on.” She touched his arm, the hard flesh that was at once so familiar and so new. “I just didn’t know you kept them.”

  He shrugged and looked down. “I didn’t; Bliss did. Don’t know why. But I’m glad now. This place is hell on decent shoes.”

  So much for sentimentality. He wanted business? She’d give him business.

  “About that ring.” She poured his coffee, one sugar, one cream. “Expectations are running high.”

  “Thanks for the embarrassment, by the way. Much appreciate
d.” But he smiled, licked his finger, and marked an imaginary point in the air. “You got me good. Prepare for retaliation.”

  “Looking forward to it. Remember, it’s all about size and the one you’re giving me is huge.”

  “Oh, so we’re still on that, are we?” He rested his elbows on the counter, his arms crossed, his body angled toward her. “Maybe we ought to refresh your memory. I mean, no question, it’s plenty big…that diamond, I mean. But it seems to me it’s gotten even larger in your fantasies.”

  “My memory is fine. And there are no fantasies.” She set her mug on the counter and leaned forward, making sure he had a good view of her cleavage. “But I suspect my taste is a bit more refined now. Since the last time I saw your…diamond, I mean. I know you don’t want to disappoint me.”

  Mitch’s gaze seared over her flesh. Then, as her words penetrated, he lifted his eyes, as if coming out of a fog.

  “Relax, Mitch, it’s not like I’m planning to seduce you or anything!” Sabrina forced herself to laugh a little harder than necessary. “But this is the kind of banter we’re going to have to do. I’m just giving you a taste of it, so you’re not shocked. Yesterday, you looked like you’d swallowed your tongue.”

  His lip twitched. “Been thinking about my tongue, have you?”

  She snorted. “Please. You only wish.” But now that he mentioned it…all sorts of memories were returning.

  “And I guarantee you,” he drawled slowly, “when it comes to that…diamond…disappointment is not even on the table.”

  Sabrina gulped. She hadn’t had the conversation in as tight a grip as she’d thought.

  “Enough of this,” she said hoarsely. She cleared her throat. “Let’s save the flirting for when we need it, okay? Right now, we’ve got to get our facts straight.”

  “That was flirting?” He reached out a hand and trailed it over the edge of her V-neck, tracing her collarbone. “Proper flirting is a contact sport. In my opinion, anyway.”

  She jerked away. A line of fire burned where he’d touched her, sending sparks throughout her body. Her words were no match for his touch.